Otari MX-55 (1987)
A compact quarter-inch two-track that Otari built to improve on its own workhorse — and then kept the workhorse in the catalog anyway.
Overview
Otari introduced the MX-55 in 1987, and the company's own advertising from the period is unusually candid about what it was up against: itself. Six years earlier Otari had put the MX-5050BII into the world, and by the late Eighties that machine had become what Otari's own ad copy called the workhorse standard for two-channel audio machines. The MX-55 was not pitched as a replacement. DB (1988, p.2) printed the company's framing directly — the BII stayed in the line, and the MX-55 was the machine for people who wanted more without giving up the deck they already trusted.
What "more" meant was a compact quarter-inch recorder loaded for fast-paced production and mastering work. Otari's literature describes a DC-servo capstan motor with ±20 percent vari-speed, transformerless active balanced inputs and outputs, an LED tape timer with accurate return-to-zero and three cue memory points, concealed front-panel audio adjustments, and a built-in cue speaker with headphone amplifier. There is also an extra quarter-track reproduce head — a second playback head for checking quarter-track tapes without swapping machines, which is the kind of detail that tells you Otari was watching how studios actually used a two-track.
The speed pairs are user-selectable: 15/7.5 ips or 7.5/3.75 ips. Otari offered the MX-55 in six custom versions — full-track, twin-track NAB or DIN stereo, twin-track with center-track time code, four-track, and twin-track in a desktop overbridge design. The center-track time-code variant is worth flagging for anyone doing post work; a quarter-inch two-track that carries SMPTE down the middle is a different tool from a straight mastering deck. Otari's catalog also lists a seven-digit tape timer and a built-in test tone oscillator, and the period press took note of the ±20 percent vari-speed reproduce as an overdubbing aid.
DB (1988, p.2) ran down the feature list as Otari presented it: an integral autolocator, a voice editing mode that plays back at double speed while holding pitch, the built-in cue speaker, and GSPIPO — gapless, seamless punch-in, punch-out. The same advertisement makes a point of saying that all adjustments are reachable from the front panel, framed as a response to what users had asked for. Studio Sound (February 1989, p.26) summarized the package as a compact quarter-inch machine crammed with the features a working professional would want — the four-memory mini locator, the test tone oscillator, the ±20 percent vari-speed, and noise-free punch in and out all listed as standard equipment rather than options.
Pricing in the U.S. ran $4,295.00 list for the MX55N, with the MX55NM — the same machine fitted with a Nleterbridge console — at $5,495.00 list. That is dealer-sheet money for a professional quarter-inch deck, and it puts the MX-55 in the same conversation as the BII it was built to sit above.
The honest read on the MX-55 is that it is a feature-dense production machine rather than a stripped mastering lathe. The autolocator, the voice-editing mode, the cue speaker, and the punch-in logic are all there because broadcast and post rooms asked for them. Collectors note that the front-panel access to adjustments matters more than it sounds — it means calibration and setup do not require pulling the machine apart, which is exactly the kind of thing that keeps a deck in service for decades. The extra quarter-track reproduce head is a small thing that saves a lot of grief.
What the record does not settle is how many of each version Otari actually built, or how the six variants were distributed across markets. The MX-55 shows up in Otari's own advertising and dealer literature with confidence, and the period press treated it as a serious compact two-track, but the production numbers and the long-term service picture are not documented in the material available here. Buyers looking at one today should expect the usual quarter-inch realities — heads, capstan condition, and whether the autolocator and punch-in logic still behave — and should verify the specific variant, since a center-track time-code machine and a full-track machine are very different purchases even though they share a model number.
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